Caught me. Yes I did hate-watch Smash again, despite what I said last week.

I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a television show with such an interesting cast sink so quickly. I said most of what I needed to say already, but let me reiterate one point: The writers need to keep track of what the viewers know and don’t know. They expect us to care which draft of Bombshell will be produced. But here’s the thing – we’ve never seen Bombshell. We’ve been told that one version focuses on Marilyn’s strength, and another on how she was viewed by men, and maybe there were other drafts out there, but we can’t keep track because it’s meaningless drivel. We’ve only seen a bunch of loosely connected musical numbers. We don’t have a favorite. We have no stake in which version Eileen decides on. We don’t care.  And this they make into a cliff-hanger ending! Viewers care about characters. A cliff-hanger usually involves the fate of a character, and it’s often a life and death situation.

As for the ridiculous sub-plots: Karen and her gang go to Greenpoint where they discover the book for Jimmy’s musical sucks. Kyle has a sad. They decide to just make it music, like Rent. That’s it. Problem solved. It’s like the writers think DRAMA is actors singing real loud. Also why do they have to explicitly tell us what they are referencing every time they reference something? Why can’t anything ever be implied?

Then there’s Ivy’s story, now separate from everyone else’s story and other characters from last season. Ivy meets her her leading man, a Jim Carrey-like clown (and they mention Jim Carrey in case we don’t get it) who thinks he’s doing a comedy until Ivy awes him with her “acting.” Who was this written for? Is this supposed to appeal to theater-geeks who are tired of television and movie actors thinking they can do live theater? Didn’t we go there last season with Uma Thurman?

I’m starting a poll. I don’t think we’re going to see more than three more episodes of this disaster. I’ll go with two. Any challengers?

Might I suggest anyone who wants to see a GREAT behind the scenes show about theater (or theatre) check out Slings and Arrows, available at Netflix and other places? Enjoy this sample: